WHAT is it about weddings that make us want to stand out in ways that we may be shouldn't? We were in a swanky pub the other day minding our own business when the bar was gate crashed by wedding guests hell bent on stoking up a few before the ceremony.

The episode turned into one of those gob-open-glass-paused-in-mid-flight extended moments when you can’t quite believe what you’re seeing, made all the more difficult because you’re trying desperately not to stare but like the proverbial rabbit in headlights, just can’t turn away.

There were some right get-ups I can tell you. Not, I hasten to add, that I’m anything to write home about on the sartorial elegance front but at least I know to keep hide my inadequacies under a sackcloth rather than flaunt whatever it is that I have or haven’t got.

First up to the bar was a vision in black and grey, and it wasn’t a man either. Fascinator feathers bobbing in animation she was quaffing Cava like it was a pint of lager. She had squeezed into a dress at least two sizes too small, so much so that if it had been white she would have passed off as Michelin Woman.

Thighs like tugboats encased in shiny body shaper tights spread from beneath the frock pelmet clearly demonstrating why very short dresses are most definitely not de rigueur for the vast majority of us, and feet were squashed into shoes with wedges the depth of small baked bean tins. All she needed was string loops attached to them and she could have been stiff-legging it down the school playing field.

I’m sure too, that fashion pundits would tell you that if you’re going to wear a frock with no back in it, then make sure you exfoliate first. Backless dresses and zits just don’t mix and you don’t need to be a fashion slave to know that do you? Quite put me off me pint, it did.

And why is it that every outfit that hangs on a shop floor rail these days is made of material that means you’re going to be surreptitiously tugging down the hem every two minutes because it keeps riding up your bum?

Is it because we’re being flogged high street fashion made of seriously cheap and nasty material in Asian or Indian sub-continent sweatshops to keep prices down and profits up? Or are we all so paranoid about our weight these days that we breathe in and zip ourselves up into garments that we know are a couple of sizes smaller than they should be because we don’t want to admit that we really need a size 18?

Actually, there’s a serious point to all this stereotypical fashion bitching – for which I won’t apologise if it helps get this message across - and it’s very much to do with our self-esteem and sense of worth. We’ve been so bludgeoned by advertisers and the media into thinking that being overweight is the anti-social pariah of smoking in public, that we spend too much of our lives worrying about how we look.

We’re always being coerced into losing 10lbs in ten days, eating cabbages for breakfast, dinner and tea, cutting out carbs, completely banning sugar - including fruit for heaven’s sake - turning all our meals into smoothies, and running, cycling or walking are way round the kitchen while we’re at it, that much of our waking lives are devoted to fixating on food.

We’ve become obsessed with what we eat and how it makes us look. We know to the decimal point how many calories we’ve had in any one day, we spend hours leaping through tortuous mind hoops about eating just a little bit here so we can have a blow-out there, we drool in anticipation of the one glass of wine or square of dark chocolate we’re allowing ourselves at the weekend, and we’re all in danger of falling over the lemming cliff as a result.

Yes, we should eat a healthy balanced diet and take exercise. Common sense alone tells you how obvious that is. But we’ve become so obsessed with the ‘does my bum look big in this?’ syndrome that we’re actually accentuating the curves we don’t want to have because to admit that you’re really a size 16 rather than a 12 is seen as failure.

So we force our way into a smaller-size-should-fit-all way of thinking and strain our flesh at the seams while suffering self-conscious discomfort as we do so. And as a result we end up wearing stuff that draws attention for all the wrong reasons.

Sad, or what?